


Wrapped in Cotton

by GVSpurlock



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Aram makes a tiny guest appearance, Charmed References, Daytime TV, Drug Withdrawal, Explicit Language, Gen, H/C if you squint, Headcanon Liz has a potty mouth, Maybe a tiny bit shippy, McDonald's breakfast, Post Episode: s02e06 The Mombasa Cartel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4899880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GVSpurlock/pseuds/GVSpurlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She gave him back the bottle. She didn’t have to give it back. She probably shouldn’t have given it back, but she did. She knew what it meant to be without, she knew what it meant to need it, she knew what it meant to take it away. And she gave it back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrapped in Cotton

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aaronlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronlisa/gifts).



She gave him back the bottle. She didn’t have to give it back. She probably shouldn’t have given it back, but she did. She knew what it meant to be without, she knew what it meant to need it, she knew what it meant to take it away. And she gave it back.

His ear hurt almost as much as his crushed finger. It wasn’t the good kind of hurt, like a back-cracking stretch or the first gust of freezing cold air after leaving an overly-warm apartment. It was the kind of constant pain that gives you a low-level headache from trying to push it down. The kind that keeps you from hearing. Or, rather, listening. He could still hear, but he couldn’t listen. He couldn’t focus enough to interpret the sounds that were going on around him. There were maybe sirens and definitely questions from a concerned paramedic who was dabbing ineffectively at his now-pierced ear. 

His father was probably rolling in his grave. Four years of teenaged angst over being forbidden to pierce his ear and now he has a huge fucking hole in his cartilage. Well, fuck it. It’ll heal. Or not.

He rolled the bottle around in his hand, twisting the top without holding it down to de-activate the child lock. The paramedic finished his awkward dabbing and properly bandaged his ear. The noise around him was flattened, smothered, just like the rest of him. Wrapped in cotton and tucked away. 

“I’ll take him to the hotel,” she said softly, a familiar voice, muffled. Her strong hand landed on top of his shoulder, fingers firmly grabbing the muscle. His hands shook viciously as he adjusted the shock blanket in response.

“You’re not driving my car,” he protested. “You’re not on the rental agreement.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ressler, you’re bleeding and half deaf. You’re going to bed.”

There wasn’t much of an argument to be made there. She had more rough edges than she used to. Tom had knapped her, like flint. She was an arrow. Reddington was an archer. He fucking hated this metaphor. He wanted to find another one. While he considered this, she steered him roughly to the Jeep and pushed him into the passenger seat. 

He adjusted himself, a little, and fastened his seatbelt. No need to add further injury to… injury…by flying through the windshield. He suspected Keen would be hell on the breaks taking him back to the hotel. 

He was wrong. She was careful. Oh-so-careful. Easing on and off the gas, delicate on the breaks. Her hand smoothed through his hair absently as she navigated. She talked to him. Nothing of importance, but kindly, soothingly. She told him about Reddington’s plane whisking the team out there to rescue him from the big bad hunter in the middle of the woods. The buttery soft leather of the seats and the charming shyness of the flight attendant who had surely seen more than her fair share of debauchery. The perfectly mixed Old Fashioned and the deliciously aged bourbon with impeccably frozen rocks. The delightful dignity of not having to go through a full-body scan to get on a plane. There were perks to wealth. Good ones, it seemed. Not just the assassination attempts and the necessity of round-the-clock body-guarding.

He drifted as they made their way back to the hotel. It wasn’t close. There were flurries of snow in the late fall sky, mixing into leafy slush. Keen was a reliable hand at the steering wheel. He felt safe, strangely, despite the suspicions he nursed about her past, her motives, her means. Means. They didn’t mean much, did they? Snow in November was so rude. He wished Audrey was there. She liked snow. He wondered if Keen liked snow. 

“I prefer not to drive in it, yeah, but it’s all right,” she told him. “It’s better on Christmas morning.”

Oh, he’d said that out loud. 

“C’mon, Ressler, we’re here.” She was standing in front of him, arms outstretched to help him out of the car. “How long’s it been since your last dose?”

“Too long,” he moaned. “Cold.”

“Yeah, it is. Let’s go not be cold.”

They stumbled their way into the hotel. She had to dig in his bag of personal effects recovered from the scene to snag his key. 

It had been tidied by housekeeping since he’d left that morning, but his clean clothes were neatly hanging in the closet. A shower had never looked so good, but his hands were shaking fiercely now. He shuffled toward the bathroom, bracing himself on the wall. He sat down heavily on the toilet, fumbling for the faucet. The water started coming out, cold still, and he tried to undo his buttons, but his vision was starting to get a little fuzzy and his hands were icy.

“Stop that,” Keen said shortly, pushing his arms down, neatly undoing the buttons down his front and at his cuffs.

He blinked. His shirt was off and she had successfully removed his belt.

“No way, get out!” he managed, pushing himself up.

She pulled the knob to start the shower spray and put her hands up. “Welcome back. Yell if you need help.” She closed the door behind her and steam started to fill up the room. He heard the TV click on and he removed the dressing on his ear as carefully as he could. 

He blinked. He was naked, in the shower, and his feet were red. It felt good, though his ear stung like hell. There was some blood pooling at the drain, but he couldn’t quite conjure up the energy to care. He went through the motions of washing as quickly as he could, which he thought wasn’t very quickly at all, and turned the shower off.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed the towel bar for balance. He exited the bathroom and his world narrowed down to the bottle of pills sitting next to Keen on the night stand. His ears roared.

"Are you going to take it?" she asked, not turning away from the episode of Buffy she was watching. 

"No." 

She still didn't look at him.

"Maybe," he corrected. 

Buffy was patrolling on screen, consuming Keen's attention. Ressler felt no compunction about dropping his towel and changing into a clean pair of boxer briefs and half-lying, half-collapsing on the bed.

He wasn't sure if he'd fallen asleep or not. The monsters might have been on TV. Or they might have been in his head. Or they might have been him. Fuck if he knew.

He stared at the bottle a lot, but he didn't touch it. He felt like there was fire in his veins. He was sweating and he was freezing and he was screaming but he couldn't make any noise. She was holding him, she was muffling him, she was petting his hair, she was strangling him. He wasn't going to wake up from this night.

***

She threw open the curtains and he didn't move. His breathing was slow and steady, completely unlike the panicked gasping of the previous night. He was as pale as he'd been when he'd been released from the box and his hair was completely matted to his head. The room smelled terrible and he'd thrown up twice, though she'd managed to aim him into the garbage can. For the most part. She called housekeeping to take the mess away and to bring some clean sheets. She changed the bed around him, not bothering to be particularly gentle. He wasn't just asleep. He was unconscious. 

She'd had a roommate back in college who'd managed to get herself addicted to Oxy. It was terrifying then. Less so now. She'd seen Ressler bleed out through his femoral. She'd seen him try to force a man into seppuku. She'd seen some terrible fucking things, especially since she'd met Raymond Fucking Reddington, so now she couldn't dredge up any awe for withdrawal. He'd survive and they'd move on. She turned over the pillow so he'd have something cool to lay his head on and flipped the TV to an edited-for-basic-cable _Silence of the Lambs_.

The parallels between herself and Clarice Starling amused her more than a little. Lecter even had a hat when he had his old friend for dinner. Quid pro quo, Elizabeth. Didn't quite have the same ring to it, but _oh_ , how she laughed when Lecter talked Clarice into her epiphany. Painfully. Hysterically. She might have started crying, but Ressler's pathetic self was on the other bed as an example of how much worse it could be, so she stopped.

Her cell phone screen lit up.

"Keen."

"Yeah, I've got him."

"Nah, he's just exhausted."

"They thought he might have a concussion, so I'm keeping an eye on him."

"No, we're not having an affair."

"No, we're not burying a body, either."

"I wouldn't even know where to bury a body in… where the fuck are we, Alaska."

"Yeah. We'll be back next week. I think we both need some vacation time. Tell Cooper."

"Fuck you very much, Aram."

"Yeah-huh. Bye."

***

He woke up feeling like death. No, actually, he felt alive, because death could definitely not feel this shitty. Or if it did, then there were a bunch of religious nutjobs that were going to feel really dumb when they kicked the bucket.

He wasn't shaking, though. He wasn't shaking and he the only thing he was craving was a metric fuckton of water. And a ham sandwich.

The door to the bathroom opened and steam billowed out. Keen exited with a towel fastened around her hips and was squeezing the extra water from her hair. 

"Ho-o-oly shit you're awake," Keen said, wheeling back into the bathroom. "Feel free to put your head back in the pillow for two minutes while I get dressed."

"Yeah, no problem," Ressler said, rolling over so he was face down in a clean-smelling pillow.

He heard, surprisingly clearly, the television: "Be careful of the feet you step on, they may be connected to the boot that kicks your ass" and decided that it was probably good advice.

"How long have I been out?" he asked, slightly muffled.

"Three days. You've got another seven of feeling like shit, though."

"I feel pretty good now."

"Yeah, well, give it a minute."

There was a touch on his lower back. "I'm guessing you're gonna need the bathroom now," she said kindly.

He thought about it for a moment. "You're not wrong."

"I'm going to go get some breakfast. I'll bring you back, like, oatmeal."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." There was a snapping noise as something hit the night stand. "Light a match, eh?"

"I'll use my best judgment."

When he looked up, she was gone. He hastened to the bathroom, lost everything he'd never eaten, and took the best shower he'd ever had. He lit a match. The room didn't blow up. That meant that it was a good day, yeah?

Better than the one three days before.

Keen came back with McDonald's oatmeal, a sausage biscuit, and a tray of coffee. He'd never smelled anything half so good and was ready to fall on it like a slavering wildebeest. 

"Small bites," she instructed. "And I _might_ give you a bite of my sausage if you keep down the oatmeal. Maybe. I'm kinda attached to it."

They shared their breakfast in silence. She did, in fact, give him the last bite of her sausage biscuit, and had doctored up his coffee just right. It had cooled off from volcanic sludge and was eminently drinkable. 

The Halliwell sisters had some magical adventures that ended with an uncertain cliffhanger ending. 

“Buffy’s way better,” he volunteered.

“Well, yeah. Joss Whedon is The Man.”

“Word.”

Keen snorted. “Do you think you’re ready to head back to D.C.?”

Ressler stretched, cracked his neck, and fell back into the pillow. “Dude, no way. I’ve gotta find out what happens to Leo!”

They spent the next two days binging on supernatural television and returned to Washington in a significantly better state of mind. 


End file.
